Prof. Dr. Seadin Xhaferi1, MSc. Valbon Mehmedi
1/2University of Tetova, North Macedonia
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic appeared in a sudden, rapid way leaving great consequences. At that time, COVID-19 as an unstudied, globally unknown coronavirus, created panic among the authorities and the general population. Never imagining that this global pandemic would be the cause of the loss of over 5 million people, this pandemic also left consequences on the global economy by becoming an “economic pandemic”. This so-called “economic pandemic” also affected the economy of the Republic of North Macedonia, the consequences of which are explained in this paper. The paper aims at the horizontal comparative analysis of the most important economic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product, economic growth, unemployment rate, inflation, in the period before and during the shock of the pandemic wave.
Declining GDP, low economic growth, rising unemployment, decreased number of tourists, and the closure of many businesses were key features that characterized the North Macedonian economy during the onset of the pandemic. Inflation as an important macroeconomic indicator was affected in the next period, i.e. inflation began to increase in early 2021, marking unfavorable rates at the end of this year and the beginning of 2022. During this period of almost two years, the government of R.N.M affected and intervened to mitigate the effects of the pandemic through six sets of economic measures with a total of 106 measures, which were created in order to preserve jobs, preserve liquidity and recover the economy as a whole, measures which were dedicated to the affected sectors, both businesses, and citizens.
Keywords: Pandemic, Economic Growth, Unemployment, Inflation, Economic packs
Introduction
This paper focuses on the data of the national economy and the main macroeconomic indicators of the Republic of North Macedonia before the onset of the global pandemic COVID-19 (ten-year period 2010-2019) and during the pandemic 2020-2021.
As we know the massive spread of the virus unknown to the population at that time, led the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, to characterize COVID-19 as a pandemic, showing over 3 million cases and 207.973 deaths in 213 countries and territories (Pak et al., 2020 as cited in World Health Organization, 2020). In the following period, despite the loss of lives and uncontrolled spread of the disease, worldwide the whole global economy was hit, which resulted in shrinking aggregate supply and demand, job losses, deteriorating financial and stock markets, a general increase in the prices of goods and services (Kanitkar & Ramakumar, 2020). Analyzing the economic consequences of this pandemic, through this paper in the first part we will analyze the most important economic indicators of R.N.M in the period before the occurrence of the pandemic.
The second part will analyze the direct impact of the pandemic on the state economy, as we will see below. The third and final part will briefly describe the protection mechanisms and interventions by the Government of the Republic of Northern Macedonia to mitigate the consequences of the pandemic in the economy, financial sets dedicated to certain categories, and the efforts for faster recovery of the economy and start of economic stabilization of the country.
Volume 6.No.2(2022): April – (Social Sciences Session)
ISSN 2661-2666 (Online) International Scientific Journal Monte (ISJM)
ISSN 2661-264X (Print)
DOI : 10.33807/monte.20222580
DOI URL: https://doi.org/10.33807/monte.20222580
Full Text: PDF
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)